all things ‘yum’ and ‘tasty’ in this magic called life

Cinnamon Cookies – More than a recipe

We get a great amount of user feedback on recipes that we post here – many with success, some with disappointment. Those who are disappointed comes in three categories

the ones whose expectations of a dish and taste preferences for a dish vary from ours and therefore need a different proportion of ingredients

the ones who acknowledge that they have perhaps gone wrong somewhere and need more practice and look for suggestions and insights

and the ones who like to squarely blame it on the recipe because recipes are supposed to work like magic in anybody’s hands

The last category are people who assume that they know what is “wrong” with the recipe for a dish, that they are yet to master themselves, with the research that they do on the internet. We get hilarious sermons on how we should mention that the batter for dishA requires fermentation and how we should increase proportion of urad dal in dishB because otherwise the recipe won’t rather can’t work. Some of them may not know what is wrong, but declare the inefficacy of the recipe in the choicest words possible and we have heard very strange things like a 10 oz of dark chocolate refusing to absorb 1/4 of cup of butter and milk bursting at the 3rd minute the in the microwave. Of course, our unhappy souls find it easier to throw common sense out of the window and blame everything squarely on the recipe.

We’d like to reiterate the one thing that we keep saying on this blog. Cooking is more than following proportions given in a recipe, its about practice. Cooking is more than just method, its about the smaller things behind the method – like gauging the right amount of kneading for a recipe or understanding the nature of your ingredients.

I recently made cinnamon cookies following Amma’s basic cookie dough recipe which yields her “melt in mouth” cookies and gave me not so much melt in mouth but yet very tasty cookies. I followed the exact same basic cookie dough recipe she uses. The difference is that she’s been making cookies for 25 years which were once declared the best in the world by a chef at Taj, while I have been baking cookies for barely a few months. I made a batch recently with cinnamon flavour, they turned out well, just not as fabulous as Amma’s.

Method
1. Powder the sugar and cinnamon stick to a fine powder.
2. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. Add all purpose flour and knead well to form a dough. The dough should neither be wet nor very dry and hard. In case the dough feels too dry add a tablespoon or two or butter. Add some more flour if dough feels too wet.
4. Pat the dough into a flat disc, cover with a plastic foil and refrigerate overnight for 8-12 hours.
5. Take dough out from the fridge. Roll out the dough to about quarter of inch in thickness and cut into shapes using cookies cutters. Or shape into cicular discs with hand.
6. Bake at 220 C for 10-15 minutes until creamish brown.

Notes:

The butter in the recipe can be replaced with ghee for a dough that can be baked immediately.

The melt in mouth texture for the cookies develops only through practice. Kneading for about 5-10 minutes improves the texture of cookies greatly.